Chapter 159: Sara?
Liam’s exhaustion won out fast, the TV still murmuring in the background as his head tipped to the side against the couch cushion, breathing slow and even within minutes of sitting down.
Who could blame him? He just had quite the day with Sophia, there was no way his body wouldn’t feel the effects of having his balls drained.
The bedroom door creaked open, and in came someone that shouldn’t even be here.
Sara stepped out slowly, silent, and looked down at him for a long moment. A grin crept across her face, slow and satisfied — this was exactly the kind of moment she’d been waiting hours for, catching him at his most unguarded, completely unaware of her presence in his own home.
She wasn’t going to touch him. Whatever satisfaction she might have gotten from startling him awake, or worse, actually taking advantage of how deeply asleep he clearly was, wasn’t worth the fallout. That would hand him something real to use against her, something with teeth, and Sara never played a hand that recklessly. Instead she reached into her bag, pulled out a small notepad, and scrawled something quick across the top sheet before folding it and tucking it carefully into the waistband of his trousers.
She straightened, satisfied with her handiwork, already imagining his face when he found it later.
That was when it hit her.
A scent, faint but unmistakable, clinging to him in a way that had nothing to do with cologne or aftershave. Perfume. Someone else’s.
Her expression shifted instantly, the earlier smugness draining out of her face and replaced by something colder, tighter. She leaned in slightly, confirming what her nose had already told her, and felt something unpleasant twist low in her stomach.
She’d known, rationally, that Liam wasn’t sitting at home pining after her. She’d expected other women. Expected it, even planned around it to some degree. But knowing it in the abstract and catching the actual proof of it — fresh, recent, clinging to his shirt while she’d been sitting in his bed waiting for him like some patient, forgotten fixture — landed entirely differently than she’d braced for.
Her pride, quiet and usually well-managed, flared sharply.
She reached back down toward his trousers, intending to retrieve the note before he woke to find it, some instinct telling her this particular gesture no longer fit the moment the way it had five minutes ago.
His eyes opened.
Liam blinked slowly, disoriented, the room swimming faintly into focus. For a moment he genuinely believed he was still dreaming — there was no rational version of tonight where this made sense, no explanation that fit cleanly into anything real.
"...Sara?"
She straightened immediately, composure sliding back into place with practiced ease, the earlier flash of hurt tucked away somewhere he wouldn’t get to see.
"Hey, Lammy."
-
Arthur sat in his office the next morning, still turning over the encounter from the night before. Liam. He’d built up an image of the man over months of quiet observation — sharp, calculated, someone worth the elaborate architecture Arthur had constructed around his downfall. Meeting him in person had delivered something considerably less impressive than expected.
No particular refinement. No obvious tell that marked him as someone worth this much attention. Just a young associate with decent instincts and an inflated sense of his own leverage, easily rattled once the actual stakes of the conversation became clear. Arthur had walked away from that exchange with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment — relief that the threat wasn’t as sharp as he’d feared, disappointment that months of careful planning had been aimed at someone who, up close, barely justified the effort.
A knock interrupted his thoughts.
"Come in."
Preston Wexler stepped inside, closing the door behind him with the quiet efficiency Arthur had come to rely on. Preston had been part of his inner circle for years now — sharp-featured, sandy-haired, the kind of unremarkable, forgettable face that made him excellent at the specific brand of quiet investigative work Arthur needed done. Caucasian, mid-thirties, dressed in the kind of understated suit that never drew a second glance.
"You wanted an update," Preston said, settling into the chair across from Arthur’s desk.
"Go ahead."
"We finished the full logistics review on Liam. Financials, movements, associates — everything we could pull without tipping our hand."
"And?" Arthur asked.
Preston opened a folder, scanning it briefly before speaking. "Honestly, sir, there’s not much there. No hidden assets we could locate, no outside backing, nothing suggesting he’s got resources beyond what you’d expect from a recently terminated associate scraping by. Whatever traction he’s gained lately looks personal, not strategic. A few new relationships, some social media activity, nothing that reads as a genuine business threat."
Arthur leaned back slightly, considering that against his own impression from last night. It lined up. "So your read is he’s not worth continued surveillance."
"That’s my read, yes." Preston closed the folder. "If anything, the resources we’ve been spending tracking him could be better allocated elsewhere. He’s not building anything that threatens the firm directly, not from what we can see."
Arthur sat with that for a long moment, weighing it against the instinct that had driven this entire pursuit in the first place. Part of him wanted to push back, insist there was more beneath the surface that Preston’s team simply hadn’t uncovered yet. But he also recognized, uncomfortably, that his own judgment on this particular matter had never been entirely rational to begin with.
"Pull the surveillance," Arthur said finally. "Redirect the resources toward the Halloway account instead. That’s actually generating something worth protecting."
"Understood." Preston stood, gathering the folder. "For what it’s worth, sir — whatever this was about, I don’t think it was ever really about the firm."
Arthur’s jaw tightened slightly at that, though he kept his expression neutral. "That’ll be all, Preston."
Preston nodded once and let himself out, leaving Arthur alone with the quiet weight of an observation he had no intention of examining too closely.